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'Inside Out' author: D.C.'s great for dynamic fiction

The good news about writing a political thriller set in Washington? Oftentimes, the scandals can write themselves.

“There’s a menu,” said Marvin McIntyre, author of “Inside Out,” a new book that sees a nemesis trying to manipulate the political process during a U.S. Senate run. “You can really go and say, ‘I’ll pick this weird thing that happened.’”

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“Washington is a city that’s alive with electricity, so to write about it was easy.”

But while there’s plenty of material, not everyone will like what you write.

“I think it’s impossible to write something about politics and not offend somebody,” said McIntyre, a financial adviser and lifelong Washingtonian. But any good political thriller — and he likes to consider his book one — can smartly navigate those murky waters.

“If you have enough highs that are exciting and enough things that make you want to turn the page, you don’t get as offended as easily.”

“Inside Out” is a sequel to McIntyre’s “Insiders,” which saw a financial wizard, Mac McGregor, looking to clean up Wall Street. In “Inside Out,” McGregor tries to prevent psychopathic hedge fund guru Jeremy Lyons from winning a Florida Senate seat by cloaking illegal means under charisma, a guise of fiscal responsibility and by championing the little guy. If Lyons gets his way, McGregor fears, nothing short of American democracy itself is at stake.

“I don’t think the concept here is so remote,” said McIntyre. “Part of the concept is that someone creates a scenario that enables them to kind of have instant charisma and become a pied piper. … We have a country that’s starving for really constructive work politically, that’s starving for change that we can embrace as a country. … Hopefully it doesn’t take a political crisis to wake people up and say, ‘We really need politicians that put the country first — forget everything else.’” McIntyre said his book speaks to “universal frustrations because it was the frustration of the political system.”

Whatever the difficulties, McIntyre sees the field for political thrillers growing.

“You have a new series [called] ‘House of Cards,’ which is all about politics, so there are not a lot of writers who cover that,” said McIntyre. “I’m a Washington native. I grew up here. I spent my life here. I work two blocks from the White House, so for me, it was a natural.”